Our first four charity events

Our fourth Annual Charity Day is nearly upon us. I’ve been looking back at our past events. All were successes and held lessons to learn little things to improve on and I like to try something new with each event.

Year one 2015

The first event was at The Core, which was an amazing venue, (we’ve back there this year) We had loads of space including a dedicated space for Molkky, although shiny floors make it far more challenging as they rolled miles!

The event ran smoothly and raised just under £500.

Lessons learned, the raffle went on slightly too long (too many separate prizes) and giant round tables aren’t great for board games.

Year two 2016

We found a venue which was free to hire, the function room of The Black Lion. We packed this venue out with the event and raised just over £500. We formed Herefordshire Board Gamers shortly after this and this was our home for nearly a year.

We added an auction to make sure we got maximum money for the top prizes, this went really well. Our attendance was similar to year one we had yet to build a community and didn’t have the backing of The Core community.Lessons learned, you need help to run and advertise events.

Year three 2017

The Imperial function room, which is the home of our Thursday night events. The room is T shaped which allows us to move noiser or side events away to manage noise. The light could be slightly better but a great space, unfortunately not wheel chair accessible. Having the backing of the community in advertising the event and teaching the games helped loads.Lessons learned. Secret / blind auction didn’t quite work and I think we could have raised more money with a traditional auction. We added Artemis Starship bridge simulator as a side event. We also decided too many mandatory events or activities breaks up the flow of the event too much.

Final lessons learned I need to take better photos. I am normally so busy teaching and greeting, coupled with not wanting to intrude..

It is going to be great to be back at The Core, it also looks very different to the first photos, they have been on a great journey too and look vastly different. This is a great venue huge and more accessible 1 step rather than a flight of stairs.